Introduction: London Stock Exchange

That article is about Introduction: London Stock Exchange. One of the oldest stock exchanges present in the world is located in London. It is none other than the London Stock Exchange, which was established in 1801. The exchange is owned by the London Stock Exchange Group, which also owns Borsa Italiana – Italy’s primary stock exchange.

If you trace the history of this stock exchange, you will realize that the exchange was set up to finance various kinds of expeditions that resulted in the colonization of a good share of the globe by the British. In the rest of the passages, I would like to point out certain interesting aspects of this stock exchange.

The currency deployed during the trading in the London Stock Exchange happens to be GBX (penny sterling). About 3,233 companies are already listed in this exchange, which is precisely located at the Paternoster Square, London.

Realizing the immense financial potentials of this exchange, the American stock exchange NASDAQ had tried to acquire it on countless occasions. The acquisition efforts were kick started by 2005 – NASDAQ relentlessly pursued the proposition for a couple of years. By 2007, NASDAQ made a formal announcement citing the inability to acquire the exchange.

In order to safeguard the essence of trading, the London Stock Exchange broadly classifies its operations into four sectors. They are the equity markets, the trading services, derivatives and information services. The equity market is in turn segregated into four – the main market, the alternative investment market, professional securities market and the specialist fund market.

The stock exchange encourages foreign as well as national companies to participate actively in the trading procedures exercised. In fact, many multinational companies are already listed in the LSE. The conventional forms of financial securities (such as the contract of difference, exchange traded funds and fixed interest) are dealt in the trading market.

In order to impart real-time feeds from the exchange to the commoners, the London Stock Exchange has elaborate electronic networks – the operation of this network is taken care of by the information services’ division.

The inexperienced traders can try their luck in derivatives – instead of paying the entire face value of their favored shares; the brokers can secure shares by paying a fraction of the original cost. An agreement will be created between the seller and the buyer, and it is generally a niche where the risk factor is considerably low.

The London Stock Exchange is often ceremoniously quoted in advertisements by the software giant Microsoft (of Bill Gates fame). The trading platform of the exchange was based on Microsoft’s .NET framework – a proprietary software package. Certain known bugs in the platform affected the trading sessions in 2009. Since then, the exchange has opted for open source software solutions. The trading hours begin from 8:00 and extents until 16:30.

Trading occurs during the weekdays and does not take place in the weekends and public holidays. Most of the traders and the stockbrokers like to utilize the electronic trading platform for swift executions of the orders. Please visit the official website of the stock exchange to gain real time information about stock prices.